26 March 1804

Evidence

Forthcomingness

Ch 1 Generalia

§.3 Means Powers

2. Causing presence

For cause /ensuring/ the presence of the source of evidence in the case of a person there are two sorts of means - psychological and physical. In the case of a thing, considered by itself psychological means have no application: the business rests on physical ones. But when the presence of the person in whose custody the thing is, is produced by a psychological application /means/, the same may be said of the thing which he brings with him. The means by which he brings the thing /the thing is brought/ can not but be other than physical ones: but the means by which the bringer of the thing is brought, and thence /in that case/ by which the thing itself is brought, are psychological ones.

3. Extraction

To speak is more particularly a human function: but beings referred in true language to the class of things are not without exception uniformly unsusceptible of it. The evidence /discourse/ of a parrot, kept for a certain time on board a ship, would be not only good evidence but very conclusive evidence, though of the hearsay kind, of language held on board the ship.

(a) Note

The case of inferior animals endowed with a certain degree of sagacity /intelligence/ might be capable of affording an exception. A properly instructed pigeon of the carrier cast, would be capable of bringing himself /itself/ together with a letter to the /a/ Judge. Why not to a Judge for the purposes of justice, as to Mahomet for the purpose of imposture?

Competent or not, (according to the story) to give evidence, a dog - almost any dog would be capable of bring himself in readiness to be examined /give evidence/.

A pigeon, why should it not be as capable of perching upon the shoulder of the Judge as a hawk, the privileged bird of knighthood upon the fist of knight?